Hearing Renews Call to Shut Lopez Dump : Air quality: Area residents testify that they suffer health problems caused by toxic gas emissions from the landfill.

Lake View Terrace and Kagel Canyon residents told air quality officials Friday that foul odors from the Lopez Canyon Landfill have become worse and more frequent in the last six months and once again called for the dump to be shut down.

Several residents also told the South Coast Air Quality Management District hearing board that they or their children have suffered health problems they believe were caused by toxic gas emissions from the dump.

“I am so angry,” said Kagel Canyon resident Ellen Shaheen. “Daily, I smell the odors and they’re getting worse. My son has sneezing fits.”

Several participants said the dump would not remain open if it were located in a more affluent neighborhood.

Residents said that odors were particularly strong Wednesday night, when the AQMD issued a citation to the city for causing a public nuisance, the second citation since March.

“In the past six months, the odor has gotten worse and worse,” said Kagel Canyon resident Neal Morris. “I’ve felt it going into my lungs.”

Friday’s hearing at Dexter Park in Kagel Canyon was the third time this month that members of the AQMD board have traveled to northeast San Fernando Valley to take public testimony on toxic gas emissions at the landfill.

Residents and elected officials representing the area have charged that the city of Los Angeles, which owns the landfill, is violating state laws on methane gas emissions. They have asked the board to close the dump until gases are controlled.

City Bureau of Sanitation officials have admitted that gas emissions at the dump violate state law, but said they will be in “substantial compliance” with the law by Aug. 2.

The hearing board, a quasi-judicial panel, will continue taking testimony at the AQMD headquarters in El Monte on June 8. They are scheduled to hear a doctor who treated an 11-year-old girl who became sick after she inhaled gas from the dump. Deputy City Atty. Christopher Westhoff, representing the Bureau of Sanitation, said he will present his own health experts then.

About 100 residents attended some part of Friday’s six-hour hearing.

Kagel Canyon resident Mary Shannon held up a large picture of her sons, ages 2 and 4, as she urged the hearing board to shut the landfill.

“The dump must be closed in order for the city to take my children’s health seriously,” she said.

Michelle Zapple of Kagel Canyon said her pediatrician has told her that long-term exposure to gases from the dump could be harmful to her two small children. She is pregnant with her third child.

Lake View Terrace resident Patricia Rivera said her year-old daughter became ill and was diagnosed as having a bacterial infection in her bloodstream caused by “something airborne” after walking outside near her home.

In addition to calling for the board to close the landfill, Anson Burlingame of nearby Shadow Hills asked that a planned expansion of the dump be halted until gas emissions are brought under control.

After the hearing, J. Malcolm Toy, the city’s principal sanitary engineer, said the city will have spent $2.7 million to install a gas collection system to control the problem. He said 48 wells to control emissions have been installed and that 200 more are planned.

“We’ll do whatever it takes,” he said.